1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information display control apparatus and a program for performing control to display an example sentence using an entry word conforming to an input word.
2. Description of Related Art
An information display control apparatus called as an electronic dictionary has been conventionally known. Such an electronic dictionary therein incorporates several kinds of electronic dictionary data such as the data of a Japanese dictionary, the data of an English-Japanese dictionary, the data of a Japanese-English dictionary, the data of an English dictionary, the data of an encyclopedia, and the like. As one of the functions equipped by the electronic dictionary, an example sentence search function is known.
For example, an entry word “look” is stored in an English-Japanese dictionary database (hereinafter a database is referred to as “DB”) correspondingly to explanation information thereof being a semantic content thereof. In the explanation information, an example sentence using the entry word “look” is included. The example sentence search function is a function for searching for an example sentence using a desired word among example sentences included in such dictionary DBs to display the searched example sentence. As a technique for accelerating the example sentence search, for example, a technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2001-134567 is known.
However, the conventional example sentence search function has a following intrinsic problem even if the conventional example sentence search function is accelerated by use of the technique disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2001-134567. That is, for example, when a user performs the example sentence search by use of the words “look” and “up” as search words, example sentences including the words “look” and “up” are simply searched for to be displayed. Consequently, an example sentence having no direct relation to the words “look” and “up” such as “She came up for a look at the new boy.” or the like is displayed.
When the number of the example sentences displayed on a screen by means of the example sentence search function is two or three, trouble of a user for finding a desired example sentence is small. However, when tens of example sentences which cannot be displayed in one screen are displayed, the user may get irritated. In particular, the so-called full content type electronic dictionary, which is made by digitalizing the whole contents of a paper-made dictionary, has been frequently used recently. In such an electronic dictionary, amount of explanation information for one entry V word is large, and proportionally, a large number of example sentences are stored. Consequently, there are lots of cases where the number of the example sentences which are searched for to be displayed by the example sentence search function approaches tens. In such cases, the user needs to scroll the contents while confirming the contents of the example sentences.